person, _qua_ his fat. It was, indeed, the fashion of the day--and on
the stage particularly--to assume that fatness was associated with
something comic. There are a number of stout persons in Pickwick--the
hero himself, Tupman, old Weller, and all the coachmen, the turnkeys,
Slammer, Wardle, Fat Boy, Nupkin's cook, Grummer, Buzfuz, Mrs. Weller,
Mr. Bagman's uncle, and others. Thackeray attempted to work with this
element in the case of Jos Sedley, and his fatness had a very close
connection with his character. But, in the case of Boz, his aim was much
more intellectual and, as it were, refined. For his object was to show
what was a fat person's view of this world, as seen through the medium of
Fat. The Fat Boy is not a selfish, sensual being by nature--he is really
helpless, and the creature of necessity who is forced by his bulk to take
a certain _fat_ view of everything round him." If we reflect on it we
shall see how clearly this is carried out. It is curious that, in the
instance of the Fat Boy, Boz should have repeated or duplicated a
situation, and yet contrived to impart such varied treatment, but I
suspect no one has ever noticed the point. Joe, it will be remembered,
witnessed the proceedings in the arbour, when Mr. Tupman declared his
passion for the spinster aunt, and the subsequent embracing--to the great
embarrassment of the pair. At the close of the story he also intruded on
another happy pair--Mr. Snodgrass and his _inamorata_--at a similar
delicate moment. Yet in the treatment, how different--"_I wants to make
yer flesh creep_!"--his taking the old lady into confidence; and then he
was pronounced by his master, Wardle, to be under some delusion--"let me
at him"--&c., so his story and report led him into a scrape. When he
intruded on the pair at Osborne's Hotel, and Snodgrass was, later, shut
up there, again he was made the scapegoat, and Wardle insisted that he
was drunk, &c. So here were the incidents repeating themselves.

II.--Shooting, Riding, Driving, etc.

Boz declared in one of his Prefaces that he was so ignorant of country
sports, that he could not attempt to deal with them in a story.
Notwithstanding this protest, he has given us a couple of shooting scenes
which show much experience of that form of field sports. There is a tone
of sympathy and freshness, a keen enjoyment of going forth in the
morning, which proves that he himself had taken part in such things. Rook-
sho